The field of broken dreams

31 August 2007 — 10:00am

A new film tackles the change in sport culture, writes Craig Mathieson.

IT'S one of the great mysteries of Australia's cultural identity. Why, in a country where sport begins as a collective pastime and usually ends as a national obsession, is it so rarely seen on our movie screens? In the national cinema, sport is rarely a backdrop, let alone the means of developing a story or exploring our collective character. If a horse race can stop a nation, and various football codes supply a weekly narrative of high drama, intrigue and boundless passion, shouldn't it be reflected in the films we create?

"We are producing, as a film industry, remarkably bleak material. That's not a trade secret," wryly observes Matt Nable, the debutante writer and star of The Final Winter, a sporting tale that hopes to reduce the imbalance. "I don't know if filmmakers believe that to derive something emotionally significant, that's what you've got to do. I don't know why it's that way, whether it's the people in the industry or something else, but there are some great stories to be told there."

Advertisement

Nable can quote the rare commercial (Phar Lap) and critical successes (The Club - "beloved by all," he says with obvious respect) that mark the Australian film industry's rare excursions into the sporting life. He's hopeful that The Final Winter can bring in the audiences who normally treat Australian releases with suspicion, although in Victoria - despite the success of the Melbourne Storm in carving out a foothold - he has the added difficulty of trying to sell a rugby league film in the heartland of Australian rules.

It's a problem to which he has a simple answer. "I could have set the movie at an AFL club and not changed a word. This happened across a lot of sporting codes, not just rugby league," explains Nable, who as a young boy spent two years at Portsea when his father, a soldier, was stationed there, and happily played for the Sorrento Midgets and followed the Richmond of Kevin Sheedy and Kevin Bartlett.

The Final Winter is about the commodification of sport and how a champion in one era is discarded in the next. Set in the early 1980s, as corporate sponsors and business plans take hold, it's the story of "Grub" Henderson, the fierce but ageing enforcer and captain of the Newtown Jets, one of the suburban sides that was then part of the New South Wales Rugby League competition, the forerunner to today's national competition, the Australian Rugby League, in the same way as the VFL became the AFL.

"Your only job is to hurt the bloke in front of you," Grub tells his team before a vital end-of-season clash. The players smoke at half-time, drink beer straight afterwards and work as labourers and tradesmen to supplant their semi-professional contracts. In the grandstand, the new CEO, Colgate (John Jarratt), plots to make the club profitable by signing "marquee" players who can excite sponsors. At home, Grub speaks to his daughters like he does his teammates, while he carries an air of violence both on and off the field.

"Grub scares me," explains the genial Nable, who has shed some of the bulk he acquired for the role and looks like a young Charles Bronson.

"He's not particularly endearing and that's a fair representation of a lot of working-class men from that era - they found it very hard to show their emotions. I knew guys like that. You would just feel uncomfortable around them. I'd think to myself: 'Time to get out of here'."

The 34-year-old knows the film's milieu intimately. Aside from his time in Victoria, his childhood was spent around and, after a game, on Manly's Brookvale Oval, at the heart Sydney's northern beach suburbs. He rose through the junior ranks and made half-a-dozen appearances for the senior team, but admits that he lacked the commitment to make it last. "I was a dreamer," he readily concedes.

Nable's rugby league career ended and his writing career started in 1995, when he was playing for Carlisle in England. In a team where he was the only player with all his own teeth intact, he wrote the first version of The Final Winter as a novel. Originally the central protagonist was Billy, a promising young player, but as time passed and the novel became a screenplay, Nable saw how badly some stars dealt with the end of their career and his focus turned to Grub, originally a taciturn minor character.

The movie was initiated and steered by Nable and two old friends, Brian Andrews (co-director) and Anthony Coffey (producer). They had no practical experience, but raised $1.6 million privately and spent a weekend watching the renowned instructional DVD box set, 2-Day Film School. When the film was being shot, it was the only work going in Sydney, so they were able to secure director of photography Ian Jones (Ten Canoes) and sound designer Wayne Pashley (Happy Feet).

To make Nable comfortable in his acting debut, the production schedule began with the game scenes, filming scripted plays and then allowing the players - mainly ex-professionals - to go at it on a condensed playing field while several cameras rolled. For three days Nable revisited his youth, playing alongside his teammates and feeling the exhilaration. It was a high of sorts, but he could barely walk afterwards.